Thursday, June 19, 2014

First entry for June 6, 2014

On the Friday, I got out to Round Venue for the once-a-month Dr. Sketchy's `Anti Art School' drawing session. It was double-bill that night, on a loose grindhouse/exploitation film theme. First up was local burlesque performer Dolly Berlin as some sort of cannibal queen, with a vaguely South Seas headdress featuring a skull, big flowers and feathers. The headdress contrasted with excelllent '70's disco hair styling and make-up, and props included a blood-dripping arm to chew on.
The disco touches of make-up and hair made this more defused through being retro and ironic than really poor `cannibal tribe' tropes, at least for me. When she later ditched the head-piece in favour of a see-through nightgown, the whole thing edged a bit more into Hammer horror territory, which worked better for me. (alternately, her whole ensemble was like some kind of Vegas-showgirl-in-Hell kind of thing).
N.B - through Sketchy's earlier incarnation I had drawn Ms. Berlin once before. On that occasion she was rocking a Carmen Miranda-ish look, some Louis Quatorze style and some Weimar Republic attire as well.
The study above is a 10-minute one, Pitt calligraphy pen on 18 x 24" Canson Recycled Sketch paper.
The ones below are three 2-minute studies, two 5-minute ones and two 10-minute ones with the same materials. The lowest two are 15-minute studies, done with water-soluble graphite washes and medium-point pitt pen on 18 x 24" Canson XL Bristol paper.

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About Me

I'm a Toronto- based artist. My focus is on the human form, primarily through drawing. I'm mostly posting work on Tumblr now(link below.) This blog remains a process-intensive diary of over 10,000 studies spanning more than 7 years.
(More finished work of mine can be found as well on my Flickr account - there's a link for that below as well)